The f-word is having a heyday around the US election. This lexicographer has researched it for decades
It’s a word that’s been gleefully co-opted by both sides of the political spectrum for their most basic rallying cries (F*** Joe Biden. F*** Trump), and it’s having a veritable heyday this week in the wake of US presidential election results – as Republicans and Democrats exclaim the expletive with polar-opposite emotion: F*** yes versus F*** no.
In Germany, one weekly newspaper even went so far as to run a Wednesday piece with a one-word headline featuring only the four-letter profanity. “F***,” Die Zeit wrote bluntly.
Luckily, as the world deems the swear word uniquely applicable in various capacities after an emotionally exhausting and far-reaching shift in US politics, there’s a brand-new edition of a book dedicated to the definition, uses and etymology of the f-word.
Originally published in 1995, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word has a new fourth edition out this week with major revisions addressing rapidly changing attitudes towards “f***” in public discourse, as well as pushing back by almost 200 years the known history of “English’s most notorious and colorful word.”
Sheidlower — who also just happens to be distantly related to this reporter through marriage, a fact she found hilarious at age 13 as an only child in a household where swearing did not exist — has had an interest in the word since at least first grade, when he went up and asked the teacher what it meant.
The word “f***,” he tells The Independent, “is something that everyone is interested in, but that, until fairly recently, we didn’t actually know that much about – because really, until the last couple of decades, it was not considered appropriate for scholars to work on stuff like this.
“There were academics who did study it but couldn’t really publish it, and a lot more people who wouldn’t work on it because it would be a career-killer.”
Attitudes have certainly changed in academia, media and society; as an expert studying the word’s history and evolution, Sheidlower confirms that its use in the political arena has indeed become “increasingly common.”
“There is a certain coarsening of discourse in the political spectrum lately,” he says, and “we’re willing to acknowledge that this is out there” – whereas, in the past, politicians’ vulgarity would go unreported, considered “unacceptable.”
Sheidlower doesn’t believe, however, that more muted attitudes towards the usage of “f***” have eased the word’s bite.
“It’s still something that you don’t want your young children to say or you don’t say casually – because they still do have an impact,” says the editor of the edition whose first definition explains “absof***inglutely.” The second-to-last entry is “ZFG” – an interjection defined as “zero f***s given” and “used to express extreme indifference.”
Abbreviations ranging from AF to DILF have been added in between; Sheidlower cites everything from song lyrics to scripts from The Wire in his thorough lexicographical tome.
Researching the history of the word has been fascinating, he says – and, frankly, f***ing fun.
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do it in the first place,” he says.
